If you withdraw your app before a school makes any decision shouldn't you get your money back?

[V5RED]

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I have been thinking and it would make a lot of sense for schools to be required to return secondary fees if you withdraw your application before they make an initial decision. By this I mean reject/hold/interview invite. As I see it, if they have not sent a decision one of two things is true. Either they have not yet gotten to your file, so they have not yet rendered the service you paid for (reviewing your application) or they already reviewed it and are silently rejecting you. In the case of the former, they don't deserve the money because they never did the service, and in the case of the latter they are being disrespectful of you.

This could help admissions because it would incentivise appligants who were already accepted to a preferred school to withdraw their applications and thus make it easier on admissions committees to figure out who to invite to interviews, and it is better for the applicants who would get their decisions a lot faster so they can plan earlier if they need to re apply.

Thoughts?

 

[Syndicate]

Very good idea

But Colleges and now more or less, medical schools, are turning into a business.

 

[Syndicate]

Maybe not for-profit business, but definitely more $$ to their medical buildings, facilities, resources, research, etc

 

[cookiemonsters]

A great idea, but schools would never agree to it.

 

[terp720]

Interesting idea, but maybe with some logistical issues. You mentioned it may be an incentive for people to withdraw after being accepted: my response would be - if you submitted all your applications around the same time and already got an II and acceptance from a school, I would be surprised if other schools haven't had the time to look at your application. For example, I had IIs and acceptances in the fall, but just recently received an II from another school (without hearing any communication in between). Since I was complete at this school 5 months ago, I would be amazed if this was the first time they had gotten around to reviewing my application. If I had withdrawn from this school after my other acceptance, I would need to know whether it had been looked at or not.

If you applied and then quickly after decided to withdraw, then I agree. I think some of schools are legitimately considering applications throughout the whole process, rather than silently rejecting, and I would be surprised if no one has looked at your application if significant time had passed. Although I really know nothing about the process.

More transparency about where your application sits would be nice (like tracking for packages haha)....and the idea of ending silent rejections would be great.

 

[DrCharlemagne]

It'd be lovely if something like this were in place, or if schools aggressively pre-screened and invited secondaries (like Vanderbilt), but it's never going to happen.

 

[Narmerguy]

I have been thinking and it would make a lot of sense for schools to be required to return secondary fees if you withdraw your application before they make an initial decision. By this I mean reject/hold/interview invite. As I see it, if they have not sent a decision one of two things is true. Either they have not yet gotten to your file, so they have not yet rendered the service you paid for (reviewing your application) or they already reviewed it and are silently rejecting you. In the case of the former, they don't deserve the money because they never did the service, and in the case of the latter they are being disrespectful of you.

This could help admissions because it would incentivise appligants who were already accepted to a preferred school to withdraw their applications and thus make it easier on admissions committees to figure out who to invite to interviews, and it is better for the applicants who would get their decisions a lot faster so they can plan earlier if they need to re apply.

Thoughts?

It's a nice idea, but it wouldn't incentivise many applicants. Most of the applicants will wait at least until they have been accepted at other schools before withdrawing from others. Assuming they completed secondaries around the same time, it is unlikely that an applicant will have made it through to acceptance at one school without their application already having been looked at once or twice at another school. Not to mention most applicants will want to know some financial data before they start wholesale withdrawing from schools.

 

[BABSstudent]

I have been thinking and it would make a lot of sense for schools to be required to return secondary fees if you withdraw your application before they make an initial decision. By this I mean reject/hold/interview invite. As I see it, if they have not sent a decision one of two things is true. Either they have not yet gotten to your file, so they have not yet rendered the service you paid for (reviewing your application) or they already reviewed it and are silently rejecting you. In the case of the former, they don't deserve the money because they never did the service, and in the case of the latter they are being disrespectful of you.

This could help admissions because it would incentivise appligants who were already accepted to a preferred school to withdraw their applications and thus make it easier on admissions committees to figure out who to invite to interviews, and it is better for the applicants who would get their decisions a lot faster so they can plan earlier if they need to re apply.

Thoughts?

I personally don't like it. Just because you have been given an II or rejection doesn't mean the school has not invested time into reviewing your application. Some schools will go over your application multiple times before deciding if you are a good fit for their school. You know, like you didn't make the first cut but may make the second or third wave of interview invites. It's not like they silently rejected you, the school just needs more time to comb through their applicants.

 

[OCDOCDOCD]

The secondary fee is there to cover the school's admissions costs. That includes them taking the time to look over your application regardless of what they do with it. It also includes things like admissions brochures, the admissions website development, interview day costs (even if you're not interviewing), and more. The secondary fee is just that: a fee. It is not a payment for services rendered, it is a "pay to play" fee. Therefore, they do not owe you anything beyond looking at your application at some point.

Now there are some dishonest admissions practices that med schools engage in that IMO could warrant a refund but would be better handled by the AAMC mandating steps that make those practices impossible. For example, the notorious auto-rejections that are handed out by computerized systems almost immediately after an applicant submits their secondary fee. Schools should be required to either explicitly list their minimum application requirements (if you're using a computer to screen applicants, you have minimum requirements even if they have to be explained with a formula) or screen primary applications before sending out secondaries. Another practice that needs to die is schools continuing to accept secondaries even after they've run out of interview slots. That should extend to primaries too although that's admittedly more difficult since schools would need to be in constant contact with AMCAS for that to work.

 

[Goro]

No. Next question?

I have been thinking and it would make a lot of sense for schools to be required to return secondary fees if you withdraw your application before they make an initial decision. By this I mean reject/hold/interview invite. As I see it, if they have not sent a decision one of two things is true. Either they have not yet gotten to your file, so they have not yet rendered the service you paid for (reviewing your application) or they already reviewed it and are silently rejecting you. In the case of the former, they don't deserve the money because they never did the service, and in the case of the latter they are being disrespectful of you.

This could help admissions because it would incentivise appligants who were already accepted to a preferred school to withdraw their applications and thus make it easier on admissions committees to figure out who to invite to interviews, and it is better for the applicants who would get their decisions a lot faster so they can plan earlier if they need to re apply.

Thoughts?

 

[V5RED]

I had not thought about the fact that many applicants will be going through a multiple look process at schools, so unless these schools were to implement a sort of tracking method, which is unreasonable to expect, it is likely that your app has already been seen months after you applied and the school is hanging onto you for the time being.

In that instance the school has already put work into your app and obviously deserves compensation.

It would be a logistical nightmare to try to separate out the silent rejectors from those who are actually deserving of the money you paid, so I would suggest my prior suggestion is unimplementable.

If schools are truly silently rejecting people, that is disrespectful, but it would be unfair to rob other schools of money they deserve just to correct this.